Chief executive Paul Barber is discussing the noise around the future of Brighton & Hove Albion’s head coach Roberto De Zerbi.
“We don’t want to lose him, he is an outstanding coach, probably one of the best in the world already, and that is going to make him attractive,” Barber says.
“But I think Roberto loves Brighton, he loves the club, the people, the infrastructure that we have, and there is this sense that the work he is doing is good for him as well as for us.
“But that still means at some point in the future he may choose to take that skill base that he has elsewhere — we understand that.”
Big jobs will be available this summer at Liverpool, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. De Zerbi has been linked with all of them after guiding Brighton to a sixth-placed finish in the Premier League last season and an upcoming round-of-16 tie in the Europe League over two legs against Roma.
Barber has been at the heart of Brighton’s rise from the Championship over the past 12 years as second in command to owner-chairman Tony Bloom.
He is also a leading light among Premier League administrators and an FA council member. In an exclusive interview with The Athletic, Barber discusses De Zerbi, Dan Ashworth’s impending move to Manchester United, whether Bloom would welcome fresh investment to take Brighton to the next level, and the relationship with Chelsea, who keep poaching their staff.
Since succeeding Graham Potter 18 months ago, when the former head coach left for Chelsea, De Zerbi has established himself as a desirable catch with his brand of high-risk, high-reward building of play from inside Brighton’s penalty area.
Pep Guardiola has hailed his good friend as “one of the most influential managers in the last 20 years”. De Zerbi insists he remains fully focused on Brighton, although he is yet to agree an extension to the four-year contract he signed when he took charge. He is ambitious, having managed Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League before joining Brighton.
“It is the most unusual experience I’ve had in my career,” says Barber. “A lot of time the chairman or chief executive will be speaking publicly to give their coach some air cover, setting expectations at a reasonable level in the hope they are exceeded.
De Zerbi has been linked with moves to several clubs (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
“Roberto is the opposite. He comes to me and says, ‘Why are you talking about top 10, why don’t you talk about top six?’. It’s the first time in my club career where I am almost encouraged by the head coach to push expectations publicly. He believes that will drive the players, the staff, all of us to be even better.”
Brighton have scaled new heights under the 44-year-old Italian, in terms of playing style and success, from promotion followed by two seasons of survival in the Premier League under Chris Hughton and finishing ninth in the last of Potter’s three seasons at the helm.
“Roberto is doing a fantastic job,” says Barber. “The evolution from the work Graham did, which was outstanding, on top of the work Chris did, which was outstanding, has taken us to another level.
“With that comes more risk, on and off the field. The risk on the field is obvious. We have a very open, attacking style of play and occasionally that will be unpicked.
“Off the field, because what he is doing is so attractive, so high profile, so talked about, it then creates risk for us in a different way in that Roberto becomes very desirable. But we are aware of that and I have said for years now, the better we do, the higher profile our people become on and off the field, and ironically the more vulnerable we become to losing them.
“But we know that and we are not stupid. We understand it, but we are confident in our ability to keep people. The contracts are good, the mechanisms to secure the contracts are good. If people are poached they don’t go quickly, or cheaply in some cases, and we always look to a plan that we have in place for that eventuality.”
Forward planning is a key component of Brighton’s model to absorb a relentless pattern of losing players and staff to bigger clubs.
Influential midfielders Moises Caicedo and Alexis Mac Allister were sold to Chelsea and Liverpool respectively in last summer’s transfer window for a combined total, with add-ons, which could reach more than £170million.
Former head of recruitment Sam Jewell has become the 11th member of staff lost to Chelsea in 17 months. Potter’s move there with five members of his backroom team in September 2022 was pre-dated by technical director Dan Ashworth leaving for Newcastle in February 2022.
Brighton put Ashworth on gardening leave before compensation was eventually agreed with Newcastle, triggering the completion of his move three months later. Newcastle find themselves in the same situation having placed Ashworth on gardening leave as he seeks a move to Manchester United.
Barber says: “I like Dan a lot. He is a friend and I enjoyed working with him, but in an area like technical director, Dan will be very aware that he was paid whatever he was paid at Newcastle and they had a notice period to protect him, and he will be very aware that it goes both ways because he went through it with us. And so then the ball is in Manchester United’s court. If they decide they will pay it and accelerate him joining, that’s their choice.
Ashworth was lured to Newcastle from Brighton – now Manchester United want him (Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images)
“Gardening leave? I keep joking with Dan that if he does any more he’ll be the most skilled landscape gardener in the country, but that’s the nature of our business. If clubs are going to take each other’s staff, then there has to be financial compensation to shorten the notice period, or they have got to expect there is going to be a long wait.
“And the long wait is designed to protect our processes, our targets, our thinking. It’s only fair and Dan is a very fair guy. He will be the first to accept that this is the way it is and the ball is in Sir Jim’s (Ratcliffe’s) court.”
Brighton replaced Ashworth internally when he left, promoting former loans manager David Weir from assistant technical director. Jewell was promoted from the position of emerging talent scouting manager when former head of recruitment Paul Winstanley went to Chelsea as co-sporting director in November 2022. Jewell, meanwhile, has been replaced by assistant technical director Mike Cave.
Barber says: “We are always looking to build depth to our talent, which creates a degree of resilience. A lot of businesses, not just football clubs, don’t take succession planning seriously enough. So, when they lose a key person, the next two or three months they are in a spin because they are wondering about the replacement. We try to get a lot of that thinking done in advance and that is something that has served us well for quite a few years now.”
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has bought a 25 per cent stake in Manchester United and is taking charge of their football operations. Brentford owner Matthew Benham — a former employee turned bitter rival of Bloom in the sports betting industry — could sell a controlling stake in his club, so what about new investment to take Brighton to the next level?
“I don’t think so, it would need to be something very different from what we have that gives us an opportunity to develop something faster, differently, and even then we are talking about a very small opportunity for someone,” says Barber. “Tony has no desire and has no need to bring in another investor.
“If we did, it would be for non-financial reasons — this person can help us access this market faster, this person brings a capability that we don’t have, but in terms of him having the significant majority, I don’t think that is going to change any time soon.”
Brighton’s next set of accounts, for the 2022-23 season, will be published soon. They are set to reveal a substantial profit, building on a £24.1million profit in 2021-22 from a loss of £53.4million the previous season.
Advancing from regular losses to profits means they will no longer be entirely dependent on the generosity of boyhood fan Bloom, who has poured approaching £500million to build the club into a force from the proceeds of his business empire.
Barber has played a leading role in making Bloom’s Brighton vision a reality (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
Barber says: “This next set of results, we would expect to pay some money back to Tony. It won’t be substantial relative to what he has put in, but it will be a start.
“And I would hope over the next decade or so that, if we get our performances on the pitch right and our commercial deals right, the opportunity to repay Tony will be one that we can do regularly.
“The club has got a long way to go to be standing on its own two feet from Tony Bloom because Tony will always be significant in terms of the club’s finances, but it is certainly a step in the right direction from where we have been in the past decade — that’s a sign of the progress the club has made on and off the pitch.”
Bloom and Barber wore red ties at Wembley for Chelsea’s extra-time defeat to Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final — in Barber’s case due to family loyalty as one of his daughters works in Liverpool’s media department.
The number of players and staff that have made the 60-mile journey from the south coast to south-west London is unprecedented in scale, yet Barber insists relationships with the Chelsea owners remain cordial.
He says: “Todd (Boehly) was one of the first people at Wembley to come and say hello. We joked about the fact that Tony and I were both wearing red ties. He’s a nice guy, he is a very successful businessman. Yes, we’ve probably had a few too many dealings with each other than I would have liked, that he would have liked probably, but that’s business.
“Tony and I have a good relationship with Todd and Behdad (Eghbali). We understand that we are in a competitive world. We are not going to get too emotional over individuals leaving because the club is bigger than any one individual, the club is bigger than 11 or 12 individuals in the case of Chelsea.
Barber says Brighton’s relationship with Boehly, third from left, and Eghbali, second from right, is a good one (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
“It’s flattering in a way that a big club with a good history is coming after our people. It’s annoying in other ways, but we are also realistic that people who are doing good jobs with growing profiles will potentially be poached by bigger clubs, with more wages or opportunities to offer.
“It just so happens that Cobham is closer to Brighton than pretty much any other Premier League training ground, which is a bit frustrating because it means it’s an easy move for some of our people.”
Brighton, so the narrative says, will reach a point if they keep on losing key people where they flatline or go into reverse gear. Barber, aware of that, believes their forward planning and player recruitment strategy provides a degree of protection in riding out the bumps.
Spearheaded by £30million record buy Joao Pedro from Watford last summer, they have not been out of the top nine in the Premier League all season. They topped a Europa League group containing Marseille, Ajax and AEK Athens in their first taste of continental competition.
For the size of the club, the playing budget and the competition they are up against in the Premier League, Brighton are close to a realistic peak, but they want to be consistently in the top half of the table with the chance of fighting for Europe regularly.
“The top 10 vision is still valid because you cannot say two top 10 finishes is enough,” Barber says. “Every club has to look at its success in relative terms. If you are Manchester United, finishing fifth is not good enough. If you are Liverpool, finishing third now is probably not good enough. If you are Manchester City, not winning the league is not good enough.
“For Brighton, two top 10 finishes in its history is great progress, but it cannot be enough in terms of the top 10 vision. We need over a decade to be finishing in the top 10 five, six, seven times for it to be achieved.
“Once that is achieved, then you potentially look at a higher vision. We are realistic enough to know the Premier League is highly competitive. If you stand still, you go backwards.
“We will inevitably have difficult seasons because every club does and we know we could very quickly fall out of the top 10 and we would have to work even harder to get back. So we are very realistic and conscious of where we have come from and how long it has taken to get to this point.
“We are also conscious that everyone is running to catch us and overtake us. This season, Aston Villa have accelerated, although West Ham have had a difficult season, they are still working hard to finish around sixth, seventh or eighth. We know it’s not going to get any easier and if Everton survive (relegation), big club, new stadium, high revenues, who knows what they might be capable of in the future?
“It is a difficult league to progress in, particularly when you get to those sixth, seventh, eighth positions because what is ahead of you are the biggest clubs in the world.”
(Top photo: Barber says De Zerbi is bound to be a wanted man; by Getty Images)
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